New DS bundles arrive in time for Black Friday
In order to keep sales of its popular portable gaming system at a high level, Nintendo debuted two new DS packages for consumers, which will arrive on Friday.
The first is a gold-colored device that would include The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, while a metallic rose-colored unit would come with the game Nintendogs: Best Friends.
The last CRT makers take a hit in EU trust bust
Sony, Fujifilm, and Hitachi have been fined €74.8 million for fixing the prices of standard definition videotapes most commonly used for broadcasting. Manufacturers of cathode ray tubes are up next.
Commissioner Neelie Kroes, former Belgian cabinet minister, and current head of the EU Competition Commission has spearheaded another effort at discouraging unfair trade practices in the European Union, without even the aid of a whistleblower.
Mozilla ships first public beta of Firefox 3
Bugs or not, Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox 3 Beta 1, the first public step towards the next significant release of the alternative browser.
The new version of Firefox is running about a quarter behind schedule, and has most recently been a target of criticism over its handling of bugs. While the company maintains that such concerns are overblown, it does appear the most significant issues have been addressed.
iPhone's future uncertain in Germany after court ruling
Apple may find itself with one less distributor in Europe after a German court issued a restraining order against its partner T-Mobile.
The action was filed after Vodafone took exception to the Cupertino company's exclusive contract with the carrier. The restraining order prevents T-Mobile from selling the phone within the country.
FCC commissioner: Deregulation promotes big media breakups
As the FCC considers a plan being devised by its chairman to offer channels 'a la carte' in an effort to promote diversity, opponents in and outside the Commission are arguing it should leave big media alone.
The opposition is growing to US Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin's proposal to invoke a clause in the Cable Communications Act of 1984 to open up cable TV channels to consumer choice. Chairman Martin's aim would be to ensure a more diverse programming lineup is available to customers, rather than the usual slate of basic channels that CATV services typically select for them.
Yahoo fights a losing battle with newspapers
Though it has announced more members joining its newspaper advertising group, the future of Yahoo's consortium is not looking strong.
The Associated Press reported today that Yahoo has added 17 more participants to its newspaper consortium, bringing the total to about 415 daily publications, and 140 weekly.
Macrovision to acquire Blu-ray's BD+ for $45 million
Already the provider of a key element of the copy protection schemes in Blu-ray and HD DVD, the content protection software company will acquire the embattled BD+ from its creator.
Cryptography Research, Inc., the R&D firm that developed a virtual machine environment protected by a layer of encryption -- the tool whose viability was one of the catalysts for the split between the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps -- has agreed in principle to sell BD+ to Macrovision for $45 million in cash, plus stock warrants.
Surveys: Identity theft more critical than incursion, data loss
Consumers and businesses alike are plenty worried about identity theft, and for very good reasons, as indicated by two separate reports on the subject released today.
With the December holidays quickly nearing, vendors and industry organizations are using the month of November to unleash a pre-winter blizzard of survey results around identity theft and tips for coping with the problem, whether you plan to do your shopping online or in brick-and-mortar stores.
T-Mobile suspends Sidekick Slide sales
T-Mobile confirmed Monday that it had temporarily suspended sales of the Sidekick Slide until it can discover why the phone is turning off when the device is opened and closed. The issue is localized to the Slide models, produced by Motorola. The Sharp-produced Sidekick LX and iD are not affected, T-Mobile said. The Slide first disappeared from the carrier's online store late on Friday.
Customers will have three different options to address the issue, T-Mobile said. First, they could opt to keep their devices until both the carrier and Motorola have more information about the issue. If they do not wish to keep the Slide, they may trade it in for an LX, or apply the purchase price to another phone model. It is not immediately known how widespread the power problem is.
Facebook may enter China through acquisition
Instead of expanding into foreign markets on its own like MySpace, Facebook appears to be taking the acquisition route instead.
The Times of London reported over the weekend that the second largest social networking site had been in talks with Chinese site Zhanzuo.com, which counts about seven million users.
Visual Studio 2008 released today, .NET 3.5 now available
With a few years of noticeably hard development work now complete and with the next Visual Studio now being downloaded by MSDN subscribers, work can finally begin on the next edition.
Today, the curtains rise on the final release editions of Visual Studio 2008, and MSDN subscribers are looking forward to being able to use the new features they've actually been testing for about 18 months...and have an official reason to complain if this time they have problems. Once again, Express editions of VS 2008 that concentrate on individual development languages are available for free download.
Windows XP SP3 moves closer to completion
Beta testers have received access to a release candidate of Windows XP Service Pack 3, but general consumers still have a long wait until they'll see SP3 available for download. Microsoft has scheduled the last major update to its six-year-old OS for the first half of 2008 - likely after Windows Vista SP1.
Around 15,000 testers now have access to XP SP3, and Microsoft says it plans one last public beta release before releasing the final bits next year. The same individuals are testing Vista SP1 RC Preview, although Microsoft has also promised a public SP1 build. Although XP SP3 is more of a roll-up of existing hotfixes and should be completed before Vista's first upgrade, Microsoft will likely delay its release and use SP1 to encourage holdout XP users to upgrade to Vista.
Digital music downloads won't replace CDs, says report
Downloads of digital music are up, while CD sales are down. But CDs are here to stay - with adults, anyway, if not with teens, according to JupiterMedia analysts.
"Sales of music CDs are continuing to decline annually at double-digit rates. At the same time, we see indications that downloads of digital music are increasing," noted Mark Best, an analyst at JupiterResearch. "That said, digital music downloads are not replacing music CDs."
Apple tracks iPhone and Leopard users
A discovery buried deep within the code of some iPhone applications may be cause for concern for those who like to know who's seeing their data.
Some code-savvy users of the iPhone discovered the lines in a hidden string in at least two applications on the device, Stocks.app and Weather.app. The information is sent to a website on Apple's servers, according to the users.
SyncTV beta to offer more TV reruns, Showtime online
Pioneer-funded SyncTV claims an a la carte selection of DVD quality cable programming, but looks like another Vongo.
As the potential for a la carte cable programming is speculated upon, SyncTV has opened in private beta, adding more cable content to the online market.
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